The obsessives

MANILA, Philippines - Well, I was a geek in high school and I’m still a geek now,” Mara Coson says, right before we photographed our group of geeks. Then, a sigh: “It’s high school all over again!”

But if those quirks and the geekery set them apart in high school — and not necessarily in ways they would’ve wanted — the same qualities that made them oddities then, might just put them a few steps ahead of their peers now. What is geekery, after all, if not undying devotion and obsessive knowledge? 

It’s something surely Rogue online editor Mara and Ateneo de Manila professor Leloy Claudio have, as they attempt to encourage and provide a platform for critical discourse in the Philippines through The Manila Review, a biannual online publication. Supreme contributing editor Don Jaucian and award-winning fictionist Sasha Martinez definitely have it too, running a film review blog (pelikula.tumblr.com) and a book blog (silverfysh.wordpress.com), respectively.

And then there’s Petra Magno, who runs nine blogs — four of which (drunkendispatches.tumblr.com,missedconnectionsmanila.tumblr.com, daily***ina.tumblr.com, usapangbastos.tumblr.com) have found a following on the tumblr circuit — but still finds time to write for a living, as a copywriter for a Makati ad agency, an award-winning poet, and occasional journalist. Jonty Cruz pushes the comic book agenda in his column for this here section and as managing editor for Esquire Philippines, he helps run one of the few local publications that champion long-form journalism. And photographer Sonny Thakur is as obsessed with his photo essays on lost rodeos in the heart of Luzon as he is with his, well, facial hair.

It’s a different kind of world for the grown-up geek. While some of their football-throwing peers soon realize that it’s not so much fun to peak in high school, they find that it does get better, and the world only gets bigger for a kid with a brain as vast as his interests.

So you better watch who you run over in the cafeteria. From where we’re standing, the geeks might just inherit the earth. — RAYMOND ANG

Photos by GABBY CANTERO,Produced by RAYMOND ANG, KAREN BOLILIA, TOFF DE VENECIA and RALPH MENDOZA, Shot at COLEGIO SAN AGUSTIN, MAKATI, Special thanks to Fr. Rodriguez, Dra. Ronquillo and Ms. Puzon